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Chris Hoofnagle HOW the FAIR CREDIT REPORTING ACT REGULATES BIG DATA

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From: Chris Jay Hoofnagle To: Privacyrfc2014 Subject: Comments on PCAST Report Date: Monday, August 04, 2014 9:46:18 PM Attachments: LEGAL-Hoofnagle-How-FCRA-Regulates-Big-Data.pdf ATT00001..htm Dear NTIA, I submit the attached paper that responds to several of the questions raised in your request for comments concerning the PCAST report. My comment focuses on problems in use regulation approaches in privacy law. Generally speaking, use regulations are very difficult to enforce. I can say this from years in experience in being involved in consumer privacy lawsuits concerning data practices. First, companies often do not have access controls and cannot even identify the employees who had access to customer data. Thus, they cannot even tell how data were used. Second, once data is in the possession of a company, it can raise first amendment defenses to use regulations. These defenses would not apply to collection limitation rules. Thus, use regulations would always have to satisfy at least intermediate scrutiny. Third, the PCAST report introduces a new loophole to use regulations: “analysis” is not considered a use. This introduces a new defense, creating a new hurdle for wronged consumers who are trying to protect their privacy rights. It also makes little sense because citizens would be offended by many kinds of analysis that is not implemented as a use. For instance, Edward Snowden alleged that NSA employees were passing around sexually-explicit pictures of individuals that were captured by the agency. Was this a use or an analysis? If it is just an analysis because the data were not used to make an agency decision, does that lessen the privacy invasion? Finally, the attached paper discusses what use regulations have meant for the citizen in the context of credit reporting. The FCRA, a use based regime, has on one hand enabled a vigorous market for credit, but on the other, has created a largely unaccountable and unresponsive industry. The PCAST report does not explain how its framework will improve upon the pathologies of the FCRA. Also, many of the industry-sponsored studies supporting use regulations omit any discussion of FCRA. Big data has been with us since at least the 1960s. Today, when people talk about big data, they really mean the idea that the tools for large-scale data analysis have been democratized. This means that individuals with little statistical sophistication can engage in analysis today that years ago required training in a proprietary statistical program. So we have a democratization of powerful tools, in the hands of some who do not understand them, and a proposal to just let them collect whatever they want and let loose with whatever “analysis” they can produce. What could possibly go wrong? Respectfully submitted, Chris Hoofnagle HOW THE FAIR CREDIT REPORTING ACT REGULATES BIG DATA Chris Jay Hoofnagle INTRODUCTION This short essay makes two observations concerning "big data." First, big data is not new. Consumer reporting, a field where information about individuals is aggregated and used to assess credit, tenancy, and employment risks, achieved the status of big data in the 1960s. Second, the Fair Credit Reporting Act of 1970 (FCRA) provides rich lessons concerning possible regulatory approaches for big data. Some say that "big data" requires policymakers to rethink the very nature of privacy laws. They urge policymakers to shift to an approach where governance focuses upon "the usage of data rather than the data itself."1 Consumer reporting shows us that while use-based regulations of big data provided more transparency and due process, they did not create adequate accountability. Indeed, despite the interventions of the FCRA, consumer reporting agencies (CRAs) remain notoriously unresponsive and unaccountable bureaucracies. Like today's big data firms, CRAs lacked a direct relationship with the consumer, and this led to a set of predictable pathologies and externalities. CRAs have used messy data and fuzzy logic in ways that produce error costly to consumers. CRAs play a central role in both preventing and causing identity fraud, and have turned this problem into a business opportunity in the form of credit monitoring. Despite the legislative bargain created by the FCRA, which insulated CRAs from defamation suits, CRAs have argued that use restrictions are unconstitutional. Big data is said to represent a powerful set of technologies. Yet, proposals for its regulation are weaker than the FCRA. Calls for a pure use- based regulatory regime, especially for companies lacking the discipline imposed by a consumer relationship, should be viewed with skepticism. 1 WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM, UNLOCKING THE VALUE OF PERSONAL DATA: FROM COLLECTION TO USAGE 4 (Feb. 2013), available at http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_IT_UnlockingValuePersonalData_CollectionUsage_ Report_2013.pdf. 2 HOW THE FCRA REGULATES BIG DATA ORIGINS Consumer reporting is over a century old.2 Starting with local efforts to share information about credit risks, consumer reporting agencies began operating regionally in the 1950s and 1960s. Even then, consumer reporting would certainly qualify under any definition of "big data." The volume of data and the increasingly nationwide operations of CRAs necessitated a move from paper records to computers. Computing also enabled deeper analysis of credit risks, enabled the emergence of credit scoring, and created business models around fine-tuned credit offers, extending even into the subprime market. Consumer reporting is essential to a modern economy. Consumer reporting can reduce credit discrimination, by focusing lenders' attention away from moral considerations to more objective financial risk factors. It reduces transaction costs for consumers, who can shop around for credit without having to establish a deep relationship with each potential creditor. At the same time, such reporting must be performed fairly for all to enjoy the benefits of credit. Prior to the passage of the FCRA, Robert Ellis Smith recounts that CRAs collected information about sexual orientation, couples that lived out of wedlock, alcohol-consumption habits, and rumors of encounters with the police. Investigators even fabricated derogatory information about individuals.3 Congress recognized that absent a direct relationship with consumers, CRAs had inadequate incentives to treat individuals fairly. A primary purpose thus of the FCRA was to end the collection of "irrelevant" information.4 The FCRA is a complex statute that has been amended multiple times. Its primary provisions concern "permissible uses" of consumer credit information, requirements that data be verifiable, and access and correction rights. By complying with these safeguards, CRAs were shielded from defamation suits. 2 rd Evan Hendricks, CREDIT SCORES & CREDIT REPORTS 183 (Privacy Times 2007, 3 Ed.). 3 Robert Ellis Smith, BEN FRANKLIN'S WEB SITE, PRIVACY AND CURIOSITY FROM PLYMOUTH ROCK TO THE INTERNET 317 (Privacy Journal 2004). 4 Anthony Rodriguez, Carolyn L. Carter & William P. Ogburn, FAIR CREDIT th REPORTING 10 (NCLC Press 2002, 5 ed.). HOW THE FCRA REGULATES BIG DATA 3 A. Permissible Uses of Consumer Reports The FCRA's primary regulation comes in the form of "permissible" uses of consumer reports. 15 USC § 1681b specifies a range of uses, including for issuing credit, evaluating a prospective employee, underwriting an insurance policy, and a catch all "legitimate business purpose" exception for transactions initiated by the consumer. Non-enumerated uses are impermissible, thus the FCRA essentially whitelists the scope of permissible uses of data. The FCRA approach is thus very different from proposals for big data, which lean towards permitting any kind of analysis using data, and instead limiting certain decision making from analyses. B. Maximum Possible Accuracy: A Form of Collection Limitation In preparing a consumer report, a CRA must, "follow reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy of the information concerning the individual about whom the report relates."5 This standard presumably becomes more stringent with time, as data collection and reporting systems improve. It is also supplemented with the duty of a CRA to verify disputed information, and in cases where data are "inaccurate or incomplete or cannot be verified," the CRA must promptly delete the disputed item.6 In effect, the interplay between maximum possible accuracy and the duty to verify and delete embeds a collection limitation rule in the FCRA. As noted above, prior to passage of the FCRA, embarrassing and irrelevant derogatory information was collected or fabricated by investigators. After passage of the FCRA, consumer reporting agencies were more restrained in collecting irrelevant information, because this information inherently cannot be verified. The requirement shifted consumer reporting agencies focus to verifiable credit-related information.7 C. Transparency and Correction Provisions Consumers are probably most familiar with the FCRA's transparency provisions, which entitle individuals to obtain a free copy of their consumer report from each nationwide agency once a year. Additionally, consumers 5 15 USC 1681e (2013) 6 15 USC 1681i (a)(5)(A) (2013). 7 Mark Furletti, An Overview and History of Credit Reporting, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia Payment Cards Center Discussion Paper No. 02-07, June 2002, available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=927487. 4 HOW THE FCRA REGULATES BIG DATA have the right to dispute errors on reports; this requires CRAs to conduct
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